Page 26 of Hell to Pay
“The ideas were evil,” I said. “The people were sometimes more complicated. Ah. Here we are. Look at your smart ensemble, Ben. I’ll ask you to take me through to dinner, as you are so much the gentleman tonight.”
Ben said, “Huh? Aren’t we, like, going to a restaurant?”
“Yes,” I said, as Sebastian kissed my cheek and smiled at me, “and as you know, I require an arm. I’m hoping you will provide it to me. Good evening, Ashleigh. How lovely you look.”
“I have one dress with me,” Ashleigh said. “This is it. Basic black and wrinkle-free. I bought a scarf at a vintage store to dress it up, though, when Alix said I was invited and it would be fancy. Your scarves always make you look so classy. Somehow this one doesn’t quite have the same effect, but maybe that’s me.”
“No,” I said, “it’s a lovely scarf. But if you will permit me …” I retied it so it wasn’t strangling her neck and stood back to assess my efforts. “There. Now it compliments you.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Isn’t that a Chanel suit you’re wearing? Or a knockoff? Don’t look so shocked that I know. I’m online a lot, doing history stuff, remember?”
“Yes,” I said, running a hand over the fine ivory-coloredwool with its black bands of trim, still such a pleasure to wear. “The real thing, apparently from 1994. I purchased it online ten—no, at least fifteen years ago now, and see how it serves me still. I believe they call it ‘pre-owned’ now instead of ‘used.’ Very wise. I’ve acquired the habit of thrift, it seems.”
“Not like Augustus I-Need-More-Gold, then,” Ashleigh said.
“Patagonia clothes are like that too,” Alix said. “Also Prana. I’ve had some of that stuff for ten years, and it still looks the same. Fortunately, yoga-pants style never really changes.”
“No doubt,” I said, and if my tone was a little dry, who can blame me?
So that was all very gemütlich, very pleasant and comfortable, and so was the restaurant at which the taxis deposited us, with its low lights, well-spaced and properly set tables, attentive waiters, and actual sound baffling. Why is it a luxury experience these days to dine without having to scream at one’s dinner partners? When a couple looks for a house, they don’t say, “Let’s find one with neighbors who play loud music at all hours and talk at the top of their voices. That will be much more fun and exciting!” So why should one dine in an atmosphere reminiscent of a hard-rock concert? If hard rock still exists and isn’t called something else now. I fear I am as out of date as my Chanel suit. Or, like it, I am timeless.
Ben asked me to order for him, which pleased me greatly. We both requested the same meal, because how could I resistSauerbraten,Rotkohl,and dumplings? Ben looked dubious at the idea of cabbage and “sour meat,” but once he tasted the braised beef, marinated for many days and cooked very slowly along with its accompaniment of caramelized onions and vegetables, not to mention the sweet and sour red cabbage and apple and the delightfully light potato dumplings, and most especially the rich brown gravy, he changed his mind. He ate his plate clean, then ate the three-quarters of my ownportion that I’d been unable to finish. Every old lady should have a fifteen-year-old great-grandson, or the equivalent, to dine with; it makes one feel so much less wasteful.
“I’ve decided I really like German food,” Ben pronounced a few minutes later, while demolishing aBerliner—a jelly donut, and a fine one.
“You should visit Oma, then,” Alix said, “and maybe she’ll cook for you. She’s the best baker in the world, for one thing. That’s because she used to be a baker.”
Ben looked confused. “Weren’t you, like, an uber-rich princess, though? Obviously you didn’t stay in the palace, but—huh? Even if you had to run away, I thought you took those jewels, and probably money, too.”
“Ah,” I said. “Yes. Well, here we have the story, you see. It’s a very long story, but perhaps I can tell the first part tonight, since we’re here together in Dresden again, and you’ve all been so kind as to help with our project.”
“Oh, goody,” Ashleigh said happily. “Do you mind if I record?”
“Not at all,” I said, though I wasn’t sure it was true. “That’s the point, after all. To revisit the past. In fact, we’re reliving a bit of it right now. TheBerlineris a treat served on Fasching,which is one of the most joyous German holidays, meant to provoke a spirit of fun and celebration before the rigors of Lent. And it was Faschingon that day, 13 February 1945. There wasn’t much for the adults to celebrate, or even sixteen-year-old girls like me, not with the cold and hunger in the city, the constant death notices in the newspapers, and the fear of what would come next, but mothers dragged out the dressing-up boxes all the same, and on my way to and from school, I smiled at the children with their red devil horns, their huge yellow bows, their pink silk ribbons. But then I went home, and …” I stopped.
“What?” Alix asked. “What happened?”
I told them, then, what I’d last related nearly eighty years ago to Joe and hadn’t discussed since. About Father’s summons, and our terror. It still had the power to chill my blood.
“But he was only being questioned,” Ashleigh said. “Way after the fact, right? What was this plot, anyway?”
“It was a plot to kill Hitler,” I said, “and it very nearly succeeded. There were many in theWehrmachtwho believed, by July of 1944, that his decisions were mad, and that he was dragging the country to certain ruin. They were, of course, correct. The cities bombed, the men dying, the people underfed and so many homeless, living in the rubble … where was the end to it? So the plotters, mostly well-born and educated men, officers in theWehrmacht,hatched a plot to kill Hitler with a bomb placed in a briefcase, which they were convinced would end the war. It should have worked, but in all such plans, everything must go right, and that didn’t happen.”
“Bummer,” Ben said.
“As you say. First, the chief conspirator, Colonel Claus Graf von Stauffenburg, who’d lost an eye and a hand in North Africa, had trouble arming his bombs one-handed in the washroom, and only managed one. Then, after the Count had received an ‘urgent telephone call’ and left the building, somebody moved the briefcase in which the bomb was placed from its location directly next to Hitler to a spot farther away. Finally and perhaps most importantly, a different room was chosen for the meeting than had been hoped. It was to have been the stout concrete undergroundFührerbunker,which would have amplified the blast, and was instead the wooden structure overhead, which dissipated its force, as I understand—I don’t really know about these things—and although three officers were killed, Hitler himself was merely wounded.”
“I hate these movies with lousy endings,” Alix said.
“Indeed. Imagine how many lives would have been saved on both sides had the plot worked. Instead, the consequences were dire, not the least of which was that Hitler became madder still. More paranoid, more impulsive, and more determined to root out his enemies and dispose of them. Over seven thousand Germans were killed or sent to concentration camps over the incident, most with only the most tangential association with the plot. And, no, ‘questioning’ by the Gestapo was not a matter of sitting at a table and answering, like you see in a detective program on television. My father’s summons was probably a death sentence, because hewasinvolved, albeit in a small way, and the Gestapo didn’t have to prove anything to a judge, after all. That wasn’t how it worked.”
Ben said, “I still don’t—” and I said, “Look. Let me tell you a story that will help you see how it was. I was on a tram one day around that time—did you know that Jews were not allowed to ride the tram unless they worked more than five miles away? But that isn’t the point of my story. I was sitting on a tram, and a woman nearby began complaining about the war to her male companion. Most foolishly, as there was aWehrmachtofficer sitting opposite. He looked tired and dispirited, though, and barely looked up at first as she went on. Why was the war being dragged out, the Russians were nearly to Prague now, what were the generals doing … those sorts of things. Nobody said anything, of course—we all knew better than to agree, even schoolgirls like me—until at last, the officer raised his head and said, “It isn’t wise to speak so candidly,gnädige Frau.”He said it politely, for he was clearly an educated man. At which point the woman’s companion rose and told the officer, “You sat there all this time and let her spout defeatism. Come with me.” He was Gestapo, you see, and the woman a Gestapo plant. Even with the war clearly lost, even then, at the end of all things, theywere still that fanatical in their mission to stop any murmur of dissent.”
“What happened to the guy?” Ben asked.
“I imagine,” I said, “that it didn’t go well for him. Poor man, I’m sure he was only looking for a little peace that day. Germany had lost so many men by then that they were sending fifteen-year-old boys and sixty-year-old men into battle, and still they squandered their resources by executing soldiers for what we’d now call ‘thought crimes’. So, yes, my father would have had a bad time. But that isn’t what we’re talking about. We’re talking about what happened next.”
I did my best to describe the scene in the cellar: the explosions that shook even a building as solid as the palace, the rising heat, the thrumming of the engines that seemed to reach into one’s bones. “Hundreds of bombers hit Dresden during that bombing run,” I told them. “A densely populated city of only six hundred thousand people, plus three hundred thousand mostly unhoused refugees fleeing from the Russians in the east. And they hit theAltstadthardest—the old town, the area between the main railway station and the river. Our area. Each bomber held up to twelve bombs—the heavy ones were two thousand pounds each, called ‘blockbusters,’ because they were designed to level a city block. And then there were the incendiaries, which started a fire one couldn’t put out with water but had to smother with sand. We had a few buckets of sand in our cellar; everybody did. Imagine trying to extinguish a burning city with buckets of sand. In fairness, I must point out that Germany used incendiaries first in bombing first Warsaw, then London and Moscow. We weren’t told that at the time, of course.”
